Fight or Flight: How Advertising for Air Travel Triggers Moral Disengagement

Abstract

ABSTRACT Advertising frequently promotes environmentally detrimental consumption choices such as air travel. To date, the effects of these ads on individuals’ moral evaluation of unsustainable behaviors are still little understood. This study with a quota-based sample in Germany (N = 199) explored whether individuals morally disengage from the harmfulness of flying due to ad exposure. Based on the theory of moral disengagement (Bandura, 2016, Moral disengagement: How people do harm and live with themselves. Worth Publishers), we investigated whether individuals neglect negative consequences, seek moral justification or displace responsibility for flying behaviors after seeing flight advertising. The results suggested that individuals low in climate change concern become more neglectful of the consequences of flying, while climate change concerned individuals exhibited the opposite reaction. Irrespective of individuals’ level of climate change concern, ad exposure increased recipients’ displacement of responsibility to other actors. Moreover, we found a correlation between mechanisms of moral disengagement and flying intentions as well as support for aviation policies.